This is a carbon fiber turbo

One of the coolest aftermarket parts on display at SEMA 2018 was this Carbon fiber turbo.

Sure, you’ve heard of body panels, large interior pieces like seats, and even static sway bars made of carbon fiber stuff, but engine parts in near to something spinning at tens of thousands of rpms? Preposterous. Not if you’re German aftermarket parts maker TurboZentrum it isn’t. As per TurboZentrum on their official Facebook post earlier today as well as dozens of people who snapped photos and shared them on social media throughout SEMA last week (Nov. 6, 2018) they’ve got an almost 100 percent carbon fiber turbo for special order.

The company that displayed this particular carbon fiber Turbo is TurboZentrum, a third-party turbocharger intermediary based out of Germany specializing in forced induction. With turbocharger repair and overhaul services, these guys literally know the ins and outs of turbos. It looks like this particular carbon fiber turbo is a skunks works project of the company and is available upon special request.

Made of special and expensive materials like carbon fiber, titanium, and magnesium, presumably the main benefit to this turbo is how light it weighs. As per the display card, just 6.5 pounds, a featherweight when it comes to turbos of a similar power rating (850 HP.) A cursory search on typical turbo weights puts regular steel turbos coming in around 24 pounds, so this carbon fiber turbo is a fourth the weight savings. In a game of tenths of a second where the competitive edge comes down to mere grams of weight between two cars, a whopping 17.5 pounds of weight can be the difference between first and second over X amount of miles/laps/etc.

Although pricing isn’t available on their website, a reply by Turbozentrum to an inquiry on how much it costs is mindblowing, a carbon fiber turbo like this supposedly costs between $18,000- $21,700 depending on how exotic you want the materials or how much boost you want to push through this turbo.

For average Joes like you and I, a carbon fiber turbo doesn’t make much sense other than if you want to “flex.” For race teams with a sizeable budget, a carbon fiber turbo might make sense.